Parents in Telford & Wrekin are starting to to receive letters informing them whether or not their children are a healthy weight.
For the past three years 10 to 11-year-olds have been weighed and measured by school nurses as part of the National Child Measurement Programme.
From this year, parents will be sent their child’s results in a bid to raise awareness about healthy lifestyles and the importance of maintaining a healthy weight.
The letters will be accompanied by the Department of Health’s Change4Life leaflet, which offers tips to help families eat more healthily and fit activity into their everyday lives.
Responses to the letters are being evaluated nationally through selected pilot sites, one of which is Telford & Wrekin.
Parents are asked to complete a brief questionnaire commenting on the information they receive and whether it was helpful.
Research suggests that most parents welcome feedback on their child’s weight, either as useful information for monitoring their child’s health, or as a general aid to understanding healthy body weight.
Further research also shows that most parents of overweight or obese children think that their child is a healthy weight.
Dr Catherine Woodward, director of public health for Telford and Wrekin Primary Care Trust, said: “Being overweight damages health.
“An increasing number of children are carrying around too much fat in their bodies. This puts them at risk of developing serious illnesses like heart disease and diabetes as they grow up and in later life.”
Dr Woodward said top tips for a healthier diet include swopping to sugar-free drinks, sticking to two snacks per day, limiting portion sizes and cutting back on fat by grilling instead of frying food.
Keeping children active for 60 minutes every day is also very important, she said.
By Dave Morris
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18 Comments
good
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Can be a good thing but many families in telford live on the poverty line so are the T & W officials going to hand out fruit and veg to poor families which cost a lot more than unhealthy junk food? or is this just a pen pushing exercise
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Only any use if the parents can read of course.
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Cant parents see for themselves that there child is over weight, money could be better spent.
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more evidence of the broken society, send them to fat camp we will and make them do hard labour, not the soft socialist sort of labour that clown brown likes, this is the fault of brown and co being soft on kids
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What next.
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another job creation gimmick paid for by taxpayers well done gordon a bit more money wasted!!
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Fran – yes parents can see to a degree. But have any parents tried finding out what the official guidelines for height/weight their youngsters?
I have from several sources including National Child Measurement Programme, but getting any answers is impossible. I would like to check my own kids’ weight but, apart from my untrained view, it’s very hard to find a target weight-range for a child of a given age & height.
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Good. I trust the PCT will be taking up the same initiative with their staff.
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One minute they are banning size zero models, telling us it is unhealthy, the next they are telling us a bit of puppy fat is bad for us.
I just wish these health experts would get their story straight.
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big brother nanny state government telling us what to do, this is more evidence of our broken society under labour and the eu is to blame
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right wing nonesense from tb
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what a waste of public money plus theres a ression on people are stuggling to make ends meet its a case of foods food as long as it fills our kids bellies thats what counts now long live asda smartprice brands they are a god send and to hell with low fat food which costs twice as much takes too long i rather spend the time with my kids then messing about in the kitchen time t and w and all telford schools got real only one school cook as iam aware of listens to the kids point of view and that is kath pascall of woodlands primary woodside telford
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Even better, Tory Boy: When we send them to fat camp we can hook up all the treadmills and rowing machines to the national grid, thereby using the fatties to generate power to keep the skinnies warm during winter…
And I thought the Tories were soft on climate change…
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Surely it is not wasted time to spend in the kitchen with your chldren showing them how to cook real food instead of ready made meals?
Vegetables are not expensive and should make the majority of a meal if not in some cases all, and there are inexpensive cuts of meat which can be cooked slowly and taste really good – try slow cookers which you fill in the morning and need not touch until you need to feed your family their eveing meal.
Children need to understand food does not come from chilled and frozen packets and they will learn life skills to enable them to feed themselves and their children properly. I despair when I read comments like Ruth’s above.
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Yet more public sector non-jobs!!
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I’dont Believe it …
Surely it is not wasted time to spend in the kitchen with your chldren showing them how to cook real food instead of ready made meals?
Thoroughly agree with you –
But
Therein lies the problem – how many parents can cook – let alone being creative in the kitchen with their kids?
In the Several generations on from the 40’s and 50’s, when families HAD to make do with basic foods, AND spend time in the kitchen preparing meals, we now have generations of people who can’t even put a properly worded and correctly spelt post on this forum – let alone cook for their kids.
So – Where the problem ?
We have spent decades seeing the demise of the small shop, the greengrocer, grocer, butcher, baker etc all of whom played a part in the proper nourishment of the family in their day.
And what have we got now? Big supermarkets trying to emulate the “old” ways by trying to make us buy “healthy living foods” !
Is it any wonder we are where are?
And the goverment have the Audacity to send out letters “cticising” parents on how they feed their kids!
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lets hope the letters were’nt edible yum yum,if these obese kids keep stuffing them selves with chips choc’s etc get the looney pc human right lot to slap a diet on them,yet another tick box govenment easy job start pay 40k with nice penison.
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